This invention relates to advertising placards for use in aircraft and, more particularly, to self adhesive advertising placards meeting FAA requirements for use in commercial aircraft passenger cabins.
In the United States alone, millions of people travel on thousands of commercial aircraft every year. These people travel for various reasons including vacations and business. They travel in different classes such as first class, business, and coach, but they all have several things in common. When they board an aircraft, they walk past blank overhead luggage compartments doors. As they ride in aircraft, they look up at blank overhead luggage compartment doors, and while moving around aircraft cabins during flight, they are guided past blank overhead luggage compartment doors. To utilize these literally thousands of blank surfaces, the present invention proposes placing advertising placards on outer surfaces of overhead luggage compartment doors in aircraft passenger cabins.
To protect the prominence of aircraft safety markings and emergency lighting, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires that items used in commercial aircraft comply with a Conformity Code. To that end, the overhead luggage compartment doors and other internal surfaces of aircraft passenger cabins are typically colored beige, gray, or off-white. These neutral colors serve to highlight safety markings and exit/emergency lighting in aircraft passenger cabins. Thus, any advertising placard must not appreciably distract passenger from the prominence of safety markings and emergency lighting before the FAA will approve it for use in aircraft passenger cabins.
Advertising placards placed in passenger aircraft cabins should also be unobtrusive because the passengers will view them, in many cases, for several hours depending on the length of the flight. An obtrusive advertising placard could overwhelm and have an undesirable impact on the passengers Further, because there are thousands of overhead luggage compartment doors in operation, advertising placards used on these doors should be relatively easy to put in place, and because specific advertisers frequently change, advertising placards should be relatively easy to remove without damaging the doors.
Additional FAA requirements and tests must also be passed before an advertising placard may be used in aircraft passenger cabins. In the vertical burn test of 14 C.F.R. xc2xa725.853, Appendix F(b)(4) for example, an advertising placard is applied to an overhead luggage compartment door, or to another specific component to which the placard is to be applied, and the door and placard are exposed to fire. Specifically, the door and placard are orientated vertically xc2xe inch above a burner with a 1xc2xd inch flame. The flame is maintained for sixty seconds. Once the flame is removed, the sample must not continue burning for more than fifteen seconds, and the burn length must not exceed six inches on average. The test is performed on a minimum of three samples.
Thus, placing advertising placards on the thousands of overhead luggage compartment doors is desirable to reach millions of people with advertisements. It is also desirable to provide an unobtrusive advertising placard to obtain FAA approval and avoid overwhelming passengers. It is further desirable to provide an advertising placard that is relatively easy to put in place and remove without damaging the surface to which it is applied.
There is, therefore, provided in the practice of the invention a novel advertising placard for application to an internal viewing surface in a commercial passenger aircraft cabin. The placard includes a substrate and a coloration material associated with the substrate for forming a desired advertising pattern.
In a preferred embodiment, the coloration material has a coloration material color appearance within approximately 40% of the color appearance of the viewing surface. In one embodiment, the coloration material color appearance is 40% darker, and in another embodiment, the coloration material color appearance is 40% lighter. Preferably, the coloration material has substantially the same hue as the viewing surface and has a gloss level in the range of approximately 10 to approximately 20 for a glossmeter set at a single geometry of 85xc2x0.
Both the substrate and the coloration material are thin and flexible, so that when the substrate is covered by the coloration material, the placard appears to be integral to the viewing surface. Further, both the substrate and coloration material are preferably unobtrusive and flame retardant to comply with FAA regulations and requirements. The substrate is preferably self adhesive to reduce the time required for application to the viewing surface.
There is further provided in the practice of the invention a novel overhead luggage compartment door for use in commercial aircraft passenger cabins. The luggage compartment door includes a background color appearance and an advertising pattern having an advertising pattern color appearance in contrast to the background color appearance.
There is still further provided in the practice of the invention a novel method for applying an advertising placard to an internal viewing surface in a commercial aircraft passenger cabin. The method comprises preparing an advertising placard with a coloration material color appearance in contrast to a color appearance of the viewing surface and applying the placard to the internal viewing surface.
In a preferred embodiment, applying the placard to the viewing surface comprises heating the viewing surface, adhering the placard to the viewing surface, and conforming the placard to a surface texture of the internal viewing surface. Additionally, conforming the placard to the surface texture includes squeegeeing the placard to the viewing surface and brushing the placard to the viewing surface. It is also preferred that the edges of the placard are lightly heated to seal the edges against the viewing surface.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved advertising placard for use in commercial aircraft passenger cabins.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an improved method for applying advertising placards to viewing surfaces in commercial aircraft passenger cabins.